Field
The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for the summarization of a collection of media objects, and in one example, to the summarization of a collection of geographically-referenced (or “geo-referenced”) media objects such as still or moving images, audio files, and the like.
Related Art
With the popularization of digital photography, people are now capturing and storing far more photographs than ever before leading to the creation of large collections of photographs. These large collections of photographs are generally difficult to navigate, due to their size and the inability of computers to understand the content of the photographs. Yet, viewing and interacting with such collections has a broad social and practical importance. For example, billions of images, many of which are stored and accessible on the Web, constitute a growing record of our culture and shared experiences. However, the prospect and practicality of viewing these photograph collections in a meaningful way has become difficult.
Some attempts have been made to improve viewing and navigating large collections of photographs. For example, implementations of geographical-referencing (or “geo-referencing”) of digital photographs, whereby photographs are connected to metadata describing the geographic location in which they were taken (whether by GPS, or other location technologies) may improve viewing and navigating large collections. Mobile phones, and especially camera phones, are probably the most accessible ubiquitous computing platforms. Modem camera phones, outfitted with the appropriate software and/or service plan, can associate geographic data with images and increase the number of geo-referenced photographs available online. Already, an increasing number of photographs on the Web are associated with the GPS coordinates at which they were taken. Such geo-referenced photographs can be categorized geographically or displayed on a map, providing a rich spatial context in which to view a collection of photographs.
As photograph collections grow, however, such systems are typically limited by the computing problem of being able to filter, sort, and summarize the collection of photographs in any useful manner. For example, displaying photographs on a digital map inevitably leads to the viewable space becoming cluttered as the number of photographs increases, leading to overlapping photographs and making viewing and finding specific photographs ever more difficult as the collection grows.